Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said pocketbook issues would send people to the ballot box in droves this November, with record inflation and surging prices handing a congressional majority back to Republicans.
“We’re going to have an election where the American people recognize what’s good for them,” Pompeo told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “That means you’ll have a big majority in the House. And I think we’ll take back the leadership in the Senate as well.”
A former Kansas lawmaker who served as CIA director and former President Donald Trump’s top diplomat, Pompeo has been fundraising and boosting Republican candidates throughout the country since leaving office 14 months ago.
He told the Washington Examiner that securing control of Congress in the midterm elections will also help place Republicans on a winning path in the next presidential race.
“This is the course correction that we need,” he said.
‘WE SHOULD HELP THEM WIN’: WHAT POMPEO WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY IN UKRAINE
Democrats face challenging headwinds in the elections, with slowing consumer spending and economic growth raising concerns among some analysts over the risk of recession.
U.S. consumer prices have accelerated rapidly since President Joe Biden took office, with supply chaos and increased costs for gas and other goods gnawing away at workers’ earnings.
“I’m counting on the American people to recognize that we have inflation and rates we’ve not seen in most people your age’s lifetime,” he said.
In speech after speech, Pompeo is also building out his own coalition, speaking to influential interest groups and racking up miles in early primary states.
At a closed-door event hosted by the Coalition for a Prosperous America this week, Pompeo suggested it was “common sense” that China should no longer receive most favored nation status “while they are underwriting the Russian government, which is killing Ukrainian kids.”
Such a move would return Beijing to its pre-1980 trade status if enacted, drastically raising tariffs on some half-trillion dollars’ worth of goods imported annually from China. Trade hawks heard the appeal and liked it.
Pompeo declined to say whether he intends to run for the White House in 2024, noting only that he was focused on the midterm elections and hoped to stay in the “fight” beyond November.
“Where I am after that, only the Lord knows,” Pompeo told the Washington Examiner. “We’re working hard. We’re doing all the things that need to be done so that I can continue to stay in this same fight.”
Attending a Republican fundraising dinner in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state of New Hampshire two days later, Pompeo indicated that any decision to run for the White House in 2024 would rest on whether he believed he could “best serve America” at that moment. “That will be how we make our decision in the end,” he told Fox News.
Pompeo is also speaking out on foreign policy, arguing for the United States to help Ukraine win its war against Russia by providing Kyiv with more support. “We should help them win,” Pompeo said. “What we’ve done today is help them avoid losing.”
As he connects with voters and donors around the country, Republican strategists see the former Cabinet secretary’s experience and close Trump ties as selling points if he were to run for president.
“Right now, he is a long shot for president, but given his energy and intelligence, he is clearly a potential candidate,” said Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker. But the contest is still years away.
“At this stage in 2014, no one thought Trump would even run, let alone be nominated,” Gingrich added.
Trump hasn’t outright said whether he intends to run for the White House again but promised in February to return the Republican Party to power in Washington and implied he would be the one to do it. And he has told associates that Pompeo could land on his vice presidential short list if he does, according to NBC.
“He would be in the top five,” one source familiar with Trump’s thinking told the Washington Examiner of Pompeo’s prospects on a ticket with the former president.
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“Pompeo is still well liked by the [former] president, but he is hesitant about Pompeo’s loyalty and always has been,” this person said, pointing to the former secretary of state’s more hawkish tendencies as one clear fault line.
“There was a lot of cajoling him into Trump’s lane on foreign policy,” the source said.
And while Pompeo is currently in good standing with the president, Trump’s mutable tendencies mean that could shift.
“It’s just like Florida,” the source said. “You want to know how the weather is? You could be standing in one place for five minutes and it will change five times.”
